The magical overlap between Jordan Klepper and his character on ‘The Opposition’
Jordan Klepper guesses there’s about a 20% overlap between the clueless character he plays on his Comedy Central late-night news satire show “The Opposition” and his real self.
Klepper’s a progressive, doesn’t put any stock in right-wing conspiracy theories, and generally tries to find causes to embrace rather than live as perpetual protester. That, in fact, was the idea behind “The Opposition”: It pokes fun at a culture that sets itself up as being against everything.
Still, there’s a little commonality. You won’t find the New York-based Klepper at the beach while he’s in Los Angeles. He did make it downtown for a video interview at The Times (“big media … bleeagh”), during which Klepper speculated what his Hollywood-hating “Opposition” character would do on a trip to the City of Angels.
“He would come with a mission to expose,” Klepper jokes. “He would walk up and down Hollywood Boulevard and would expose these people as fake superheroes outside the [TCL Chinese] theater. He would go to the Magic Castle and expose those tricks. I think he would find himself enamored by the Magic Castle … there might be some sort of … long story short, how do I get invited to the Magic Castle?”
While waiting for Magic Castle members to come forward with an invitation, Klepper talked about his start four years ago on “The Daily Show” (yes, he really did ask to sit in the audience after his opening segment), what he learned from Jon Stewart about running a show and the blurred lines and selfies at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner. (“This is America 2018, and it’s a little frightening,” he says.)
You can watch the full video below.
Twitter: @glennwhipp
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